When the Kick-Ass ‘making of’ book hits shelves next February, well ahead of the film’s April release, it may be impossible to resist it’s spoilery goodness. According to Mark Millar, Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie is “incredibly informal” and “actually really frank”, which will make a refreshing change from the truckloads of rather insipid tie-in books I’ve thumbed through for two minutes while having a coffee in Borders – each of them seemingly designed to numb me into considering their subject movie utterly lacking in any kind of controversy or even life and therefore ‘safe’ to go see.

Just some examples of the juicy stuff contained within this Kick-Ass tome: concept art for both the comic and the movie, interviews with the talent, candid e-mail exchanges between Millar and director Matthew Vaughn, and some little bits and pieces about versions of the story that we’ll never get to see. For example, Nicolas Cage may have ended up playing Big Daddy but when he signed on, the filmmakers had already talked to both Mark Wahlberg and Daniel Craig about the role; and while Dave Lizewski may well have ended up the key character, initially, Millar was planning to tell the story from the point of view of Hit Girl and Big Daddy.

Millar has been talking to Comic Book Resources about the ‘making of’ book with his characteristic enthusiasm. Asked if there’s more to come after the first comics volume is done and the film is out, he proudly declares that there is:

Are you kidding me? Kick-Ass is the most fun I’ve ever had ever on a project. It’s not only the best response Johnny [Romita Jr., the artist] and I have ever had, but we outsold everybody. Every issue had three, four, five printings. And our overall sales are more than 130,000 per issue. We always saw this as at least a trilogy. There might even be more. I had the whole second series worked out two years ago.

What does he reveal of the second storyline? Nothing much, but for another attention-grabbing name:

The working title is Balls to the Wall, and we’re thinking about launching it round about San Diego time, right around August. But to avoid delays, we’d like to stockpile a few issues, I think.

By that time, the first film should have been sufficiently well received, and hopefully well rewarded in dollars, that Balls to the Wall won’t just be a comics series and will get the big screen treatment too. The CBR interview with Millar contains some previews of the concept art that will be published in the book. Here’s just one sample piece: